You Know Your Party Is In Trouble When...

Here's a clear-eyed assessment of what is laughingly known as health care "reform" from one of the progressives who - like Dennis Kucinich - actually thought they were supposed to take the pledges of Obama, Pelosi, Reid, Woolsey, etc. on a "robust public option" seriously. Silly progressive:

Let me get this straight. The Senate will pass a public option if the House will. And the House will, because it already did. But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi won’t allow it. So the mortal enemy of public-option backers is . . . Dennis Kucinich.

Why? Because when Congressman Kucinich said he’d stand for a public option he stupidly thought he was supposed to mean it.

Let’s review a brief history of the disease known as "health insurance reform."

When the president and the speaker of the House thought it would be strategic to censor any talk of single-payer healthcare, almost every member of Congress and almost every astroturfing party-before-country activist group and labor union, and almost every follower of those groups, fell obediently into line. "We’ll open the debate with the least we’ll settle for, a pathetic token public-option," they thought cleverly, rubbing their hands together. "Then we’ll compromise down from there."

But after demanding the "public option," too many people refused to toss it overboard, and public pressure grew to keep it in. So 60 congress members signed a letter to the speaker last summer insisting that they would not settle for a health insurance bill that lacked a serious public option. When they were presented with a bill that did not meet their demands, almost all of them voted for it anyway.

Now 51 senators say they will pass a bill including a super-pathetic token public option of the sort passed by the House last summer, but Pelosi wants to pass a bill without anything even called a "public option" in it. Almost all of the congressional public-option stalwarts want to go along with the speaker and the president. And almost all of the astroturfing party-before-country activist groups want to fall obediently into line.

Welcome to the ranks of the disillusioned, David. Now you know how fiscal conservatives felt during the Bush Administration. And what makes this galling to you is what made the W. years galling to us: Nobody's even putting up the pretense of a fight.

Obama's headed down the same road George W. traveled. The only difference is Obama is traveling much, much faster that Bush ever did:

I hope self-loathing partisan sycophants realize that the corporate media will equally depict either passage or nonpassage of a "health insurance reform" bill as a defeat for Democrats. And, in this case, rightly so. But the long-term impact of a reform that doesn’t reform, one that rather compels Americans to pay their hard-earned money to institutions even more hated than Congress, namely health insurance companies — THAT would be the real political loser, with or without a privately run program for 3 percent of us called "the public option." And, again, rightly so. Kucinich is saving the Democrats from themselves by helping to block their health insurance bill, but they can’t see what’s in front of them through the fog of their constant dreaming about mountains of money and a naked Rahm Emanuel poking them in the chests.

Call it requiem for a lightweight... A whole legion of them, in fact.

Comments

[richard mcenroe]

A naked Rahm Emanuel can only poke them in the chest if they're already on their knees, They're done. This week or next November.

[Randy Rager]

When the Founding Fathers argued so adamantly against the United States becoming a Democracy, it was with people like that as the reason.

[ThomasD]

I don't hate my health insurance compan(ies) - there have been a few over the years.

Without them there is no way we would have been able to afford the treatment of my wife's melanoma. Occasionally we've even had to fight them over coverage issues, and sometimes we've paid for things I thought should have been covered. And our plans were not 'Cadillac' by any stretch. More like the 'high deductible' ones that supposedly 'killed' the woman who declined to pay for her own early breast cancer screening. Yes we've paid thousands out of pocket every year, I've even had the 'joy' of actually crossing the deduction threshold for some of those expenses.

Tax time really seems to sucks when you add up that much money and realize what it 'could' have been used for - but them you realize what it was used for and you are damn thankful to have had it to spend.

So the fact is they've covered things that would have broken us, leaving us unable to pay for anything, much less more healthcare.

I don't like it, but then again, I'm not one of those fools who has been tricked into thinking you can acquire anything of value for free.

At diagnosis my wife's two year survival rate was in the teens, that was over ten years ago, her dermatologist still reminds her that she is a living miracle every time he sees her. So I appreciate everything that has been available to us, even the stuff from those 'evil' insurance companies.

[aelfheld]

[...] public pressure grew to keep [the 'public option'] in.

Since when did the SEIU become the 'public'?

[Buck O'Fama]

Yeah, I agree, I hate Congress more than my health insurance company. In fact, I sort of like my health insurance company. If I didn't, I could cancel my policy and sign on with somebody else. In contrast, I've been voting against my lousy idiot congressman for at least 10 years and the SOB is still there. It's like he's glued to the effing seat or something. He's likely to still be there (voting with Pelosi) after he dies (if he hasn't already and nobody noticed yet.) Anybody else have this problem?